Xavier Herbert was born Alfred Jackson in Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1901. He commenced his writing career while in Melbourne and published his first story in the Australian Journal in 1926 under the pseudonym 'Herbert Astor'. He then left Melbourne for Sydney and then Darwin where he worked as a railway fettler in the Rum Jungle area. He wrote the first draft of Capricornia in London during 1930-1932 but which, for a number of reasons, did not see print until 1938.  In the years that followed he wrote a lot but published little until the end of the 1950s. His major novel from this period, Poor Fellow My Country, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1975. At 1463 pages and 850,000 words it is one of the longest novels ever published in English. Xavier Herbert died in 1984.